Chapter Text
Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again.
The opening line of yesterday's film had stuck in Ralph's mind. It had, when he'd heard it, inescapably dragged him back to the first and last time he'd sailed into Rangoon, and his glorious few days' leave exploring up-country, even though (despite not having read the book) he knew that wasn't really the point.
Since that day the Japanese had torn their way down the peninsula, and been forced all the way back, step by step, by the dedicated weight of Chindits and Ghurkas and tough men from obscure little regiments from the odd rough parts of Britain, and Ralph had gloried in their triumph and never wanted to see what wounds they'd inflicted on magical Burma in the process. He kept his Mandalay safe inside his head, where no enemy could reach it.
Which, perhaps, had more relevance to the film than the simple coincidence in sound between two names, after all.
He hadn't expected to enjoy it, and certainly not expected it to be Laurie's cup of tea, but they'd had to go somewhere - that morning Laurie had had a typewritten letter from England, postmarked London and almost certainly from his publisher. When Ralph had got back from the shipping office (as ever, too many officers for too few berths, but the chance of a first officer's post on a big transatlantic mixed cargo carrier was in the offing; the owner's agent had been quietly encouraging and it was only a week or so away; the current first officer would clearly be discharged as soon as the boat touched land, and Gib was as close as anywhere, and the few days' grace was convenient, too, for Ralph's own plans) the door to his study had been firmly shut, and though Ralph had waited quietly in the living room, reading and jotting down notes in his hard-back note-book, he had heard no sound from the typewriter during the whole of the two hours it took before Laurie finally emerged. Through the open door behind he could see there was an overflowing ashtray next to the idle Imperial machine, though Laurie was a light smoker usually. The waste-paper basket was stuffed to the brim with the crumpled discards of aborted beginnings. Laurie's eyes were bistred around the orbits, and the stale cigarette smoke which hung about his hair and clothes was bitter like the taste of defeat. He looked across at Ralph as though daring him to say anything, but Ralph had already concluded by then that there was nothing he could reasonably say. There was something he could do, though, and he did it. Laurie turned, relaxing into the curve of his arm, warm against his chest, acknowledging without words his support as they made their way upstairs, where he did whatever skill and generosity suggested to assuage the corrosive pain of a long defeat.
Much later, as dusk was falling over the Rock and, through the strip of the skylight the first stars were beginning to appear, Ralph had propped himself up on his elbow, and said, "What you need is an evening out. Take your mind off things. If we hurry, we could get the last house at the flicks."
And, sleepily acquiescent (conscious, perhaps, of the need to get out of a house where the Imperial machine constantly expressed its own silent criticism?) Laurie had agreed; no matter what might be on offer at the antiquated and draughty little flea-pit down by the docks.
It had worked, too. Predictably, the film had broken down shortly before the second reel; he and Laurie (old hands by the standards of the transient Gibraltarian population) had first been among the group who had shouted advice to the hapless projectionist, and had then been the ones who piled in to assist physically with the repairs. Laurie, as it happened, had remembered the precise tweak to the antiquated and Bolshie equipment which set it right; the whole house (packed as they ever were; entertainment was scanty at this furthermost outpost of Europe) had erupted in cheers for his skill, and he had turned, caught for a moment in the projector's beam, and given the house a cheeky, gallant, sweeping player's bow: Ralph had caught his breath remembering (not that he had ever really forgotten!) a Laertes seen from the third row years ago.
And after the final credits the owner of the flea-pit, on the excuse of its being his birthday, had swept Ralph, Laurie, a handful of other regulars and the staff up and off for drinks at a bar down on the water-front, owned by Nikos, a Greek who'd been pushed out of Smyryna by the Turks in the '20s, and whom the fortunes of war had driven ever westward, so that only the Pillars of Hercules stood between him and what his remote, archaic ancestors had known as Ultima Thule. Ralph and the projectionist (who doubled as a tunny fisherman, and sometime smuggler) had got into an amused, technical argument in a mixture of English, Spanish and llanito about the last reel, and how practically one might bring off the job of scuttling a boat, leaving a corpse aboard, and getting ashore in a storm sufficiently violent to give credence to the notion of the whole thing having been a tragic accident, with Laurie throwing ever more farcical suggestions into the mix.
Very much later, when Laurie - the laughter gloriously back in his face, informing the crinkles around his mouth and the light in his eyes - and he had walked - a trifle unsteadily - back round the sweep of the harbour and up the hill towards their own house, he had congratulated himself; as someone who comes into a strange harbour beset by rocks (he remembered Saint Malo, that first time) might congratulate himself of having averted the perils the day afforded, and acquitted himself with credit.
But that had been before today. Someone had come round to the house while they were breakfasting with a note addressed to Laurie.
Laurie, having read it, wrinkled his forehead ruefully and passed it across to Ralph without comment.
Ralph took a sip of chicory-laden coffee - the proceeds of mutually profitable barter with the master of a tramp steamer registered out of Marseilles - and raised his eyebrows. "Edward Longenhurst? Cocktails this evening at the Rock Hotel? Who is this bloke?"
Laurie sighed. "He's my publisher's nephew. My publisher did actually ask if I'd look after him if he got to Gib, but I was rather hoping he'd forgotten. But in the circs -"
He spread a hand in a defeated-looking gesture which Ralph had no problem decoding: the history of missed deadlines, spent advances, and Laurie's self-evident fear that his own doubts about whether he could move beyond being the author of a critically and commercially acclaimed debut novel, now pushed aside in the public's mind by three intervening years of newer, sharper publishing sensations, were finally being shared by his publisher.
"Well," Ralph said, "however much of a stumer the chap turns out to be, I daresay we can both survive a few hours of it. What brings him to Gib?"
Laurie's voice was absolutely toneless. "He's on his way to Tangier. He plans - ah - to immerse himself completely in the culture of the country."
Their eyes met in perfect understanding.
"Well," Ralph said crisply, "in that case let's hope for his own sake he doesn't have an allergy to penicillin."
The subject disposed of, he turned his attention to considering the dying throes of the English county cricket season, in a week-old Times he had picked up at the shipping office.